Fifteen Hundred Checkups

In order to access the ship in the early days, all passengers were inspected by two doctors—one of our own and one from the Board of Health. They made sure the person standing in front of them matched the physician-signed ticket with the child’s illness indicated; that no child was older than six, unless a “little mother” (an older sister in charge of a younger sibling, with the mother absent); and to make sure no one had a contagious disease.

Dr. “Ferd.” C. Valentine, volunteering in 1876 described how the procedure actually worked. “Once stationed at the bottom of the gangplank the signal would be given to ’let them on’ and the police would endeavor to cause the surging crowd to form a sort of line, which effort generally proves futile.

“In a moment you are besieged. Here comes a poor, weak creature, who with club-nailed fingers grasps a tiny skeleton hand. Had you the time, you might deliberate as to which deserves the most sympathy, but you see five or six hundred people before you, all of whom you must ‘examine’ in half an hour.” At the next two stops the process would be repeated.

He described a hilarious encounter with an “imposter” as such… “a large, healthy girl, who is evidently of marriageable age, but who calls High Heaven to certify that she has not yet passed her sixth year! She wishes to make a picnic of it, and when you turn her off, if billingsgate [the rowdy London fish market] had any weight you would need the arched rock of Hell Gate to protect you from the choice epithets which the innocent child of less than six summers showers upon you!”

Photo from the Report of St. John’s Guild, 1892: Dr. W.A. Walker, attending physician, in white official cap, with Dr. Purcell, NYC Board of Health

Source: “The Floating Hospital of St. John’s Guild.” By Ferd. C. Valentine, M.D., Physician to the Floating Hospital. St. Louis Clinical Record: a monthly journal of medicine and surgery, Vol. 3, No. 7, October 1876.